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Casey Middle School teacher, CU-Boulder graduate students headed to Antarctica

Grant to science program will fund research trip

By Scott Franz, For the Camera

Posted:
12/13/2009 01:00:00 AM MST

Ian Schwartz, a teacher at Casey Middle School, tells his class about his upcoming trip to Antarctica with three University of Colorado ecology and evuolutionary biology graduate students to conduct ecological research in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, an ice free desert that is one of the coldest and driest places on Earth.
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CLIFF GRASSMICK
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Students in Ian Schwartz's eighth-grade science students at Casey Middle School are all asking him the same question: What do we have to do to go to Antarctica?

On Friday, Dec. 18, Schwartz will travel to the frigid continent with three University of Colorado ecology and evolutionary biology graduate students to conduct ecological research in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, an ice-free desert that is one of the coldest and driest places on Earth. The trip is the result of a research proposal by the graduate students to study extreme environments, and is a collaboration between the Boulder Valley School District and the University of Colorado.

"This will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience for me to go and do real scientific research in such a unique environment," said Schwartz. "I can't wait to bring these experiences back to my classroom."

The two-month trip will be paid for by a supplementary grant to the National Science Foundation's GK-12 program. The program pairs graduate students with teachers like Schwartz to improve their teaching skills and give them an opportunity to conduct extensive scientific research.

"We are working together as a team," said Schwartz. "This is the graduate students' project, and I'll be bringing my teaching expertise to help them with it."

Loren Sackett, one of the graduate students going on the trip, said she couldn't wait to get to Antarctica.

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"It's going to be completely new and different from everywhere I've ever been," she said. "It will also be fun to be at a research station, which is a really collaborative atmosphere."

This year, Sackett has been working with students at Louisville Middle School, teaching them about extreme environments. Her research will be an extension of what she is teaching to students here. In Antarctica, she will be studying bacterial systems that live inside microscopic nematodes.

"We chose Antarctica because its' ecosystem is so simple," she said. "We will be helping scientists at the McMurdo research station with their core projects."

Lesley Smith, outreach scientist for the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at CU, says she hopes the students will come back ready to share their research with students in kindergarten through 12-grade schools. She says the trip was also designed to enrich student's perceptions of scientists.

"When we ask students to draw a scientist, most of them draw men with a white lab coat on and something blowing up," she said. "A lot of kids don't understand the different facets of science. It's not always sitting in a lab by yourself. It's about being outside doing fieldwork with other scientists and working in teams."

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